To lose one gallery may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two in 10 days looks like carelessness.
Collector-turned-dealer Adam Lindemann has announced he is closing Venus Over Manhattan, the New York gallery he founded in 2011, and will return to life as just a collector.
It will close when a Susumu Kamijo solo show ends on July 18.
The son of cable-TV billionaire George Lindemann, he explained his decision in ArtNet News saying the move from collecting to selling had just succeeded in "alienating both sides".
He added: “Dealers distrust you, and most collectors don’t get what you’re up to, so they turn up their noses in disapproval—or even worse, they resent you for switching sides.”
His announcement yesterday came hot on the heels of Los Angeles-based dealer Tim Blum's decision to close his sites in LA and Tokyo while gallery space in New York's Tribeca bought only two years ago for $5.3 million looks set to never open at all.
He put it down to the pandemic altering buying habits and the post-covid boom and bust putting off a new generation of potential collectors, telling the New York Times gallerists had been complicit in building the art market at an unsustainable scale.
“It had become the equivalent of having a large container ship and trying to turn it around in the Panama Canal," he said and revealed his gallery spent $450,000 attending Art Basel in Basel in June but deals were few and far between.